Don't be afraid of tenderness

On the day of the mass for the start of the Petrine Ministry of the Bishop of Rome, to give it its official name, the sun smiled down on St. Peter’s square. Yesterday was grey and windy in Rome. Tomorrow will probably be grey and windy in Rome. But today the sun shone. It never does any harm to have a friend in high places.

An estimated 200,000 crammed into the square along with 31 heads of state; 11 heads of government, 6 reigning sovereigns, 3 crown princes and a healthy sprinkling of first ladies, vice presidents, deputy prime ministers, ministers and ambassadors. The best Britain could muster was the Duke of Gloucester, which I thought was a bit stingy. There were 33 delegations representing Christian Churches, a substantial number of leading Jewish figures, as well as delegations of Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains. Is there any other event that could bring together such a diverse and high-ranking group? The Vatican press office had stressed in two separate press briefings that, “no one is invited, no one is refused.” In other words, don’t blame us if Mugabe insisted on coming.

The pope left the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he is still living with the other Cardinals, at around 8.50 and got into a white open-topped vehicle to tour around the piazza to meet the people. He looked like he was having fun. At one point he stepped out of the vehicle to kiss a disabled man. He then went into the basilica to pray at the tomb of St. Peter, accompanied by the Patriarchs and Major Archbishops of the Eastern Rite Catholic Churches. When the procession came out into the piazza once more, the cardinals looked particularly splendid in their best gold cloaks.

It was a slimmed down service. We had the essentials: the placing of the white lambs wool pallium on the Pope’s shoulders and the presentation of the Fisherman’s Ring. The pallium was that used by Benedict XVI, and the ring gold-plated rather than the usual solid gold, typical of Francis the Frugal. (He didn’t even want to splash out on a new coat of arms. Yesterday we were shown the one he used as Archbishop, with the cardinal’s hat replaced by the papal mitre. It looked as if Father Lombardi had drawn it himself with a ruler and some crayons just before the briefing.) There was no offertory procession and six cardinals represented the entire college of cardinals and pledged obedience, rather than each one queuing up. That saved an awful lot of time. And rather than the Pope himself giving communion, 500 priests went among the crowd distributing the wafers, emphasising another characteristic of this papacy, collegiality.

We didn’t hear the pope sing. A journalist asked yesterday why he never sang. Was it because he only had one lung? Father Lombardi thought not. Perhaps he’s tone deaf, he joked. He likes a joke does Father Lombardi. We did hear a homily. It was in clear, simple Italian and delivered a clear, simple message: look after each other and the environment, don’t be afraid of tenderness, take care of the poor and the weak. Catholic or Prostestant, Jew, Muslim or atheist, whatever part of the world you're from, you couldn’t really argue with that.

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On the occasion of the Conclave we had the opportunity to see the official and hierarchical authority of the Catholic Church in action. While the “other” church, the much larger community of sincere believers, although far from being absent, seemed to be watching in anxious participation and ever hopeful wait for significant novelty. All the more so after the election of the Franciscan pope. But history can be frustrating and tells us that Saint Francis’ popular and uncompromising message of poverty and simplicity got pretty mellow following the official intervention of Bonaventura from Bagnoregio.

The doctrinal Church boasts that its millennial survival is clear evidence of Catholicism being the ‘true’ and only version of Christianity (and possibly of religion tout court). Wouldn’t the propensity to compromise rather be the cause of such an enviable longevity? Avoiding the direct confrontation with the reality of dictatorships hasn’t it been a worrying feature of Vatican diplomacy, in past and present times?

A few words about the risky contest for the perfect pedigree of a religion. It is painfully obvious that the old dispute between the great monotheistic religions (“There is only one god and mine is the true one”) still lays at the root of most of the violence that has been inflaming for ages the controversial history of human coexistence.